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Religious atheists?

Lark

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Are there any religious athiests on the forum or does anyone know of any? By this I mean anyone who professes to believe or follow a religion or religious disciplines but who does not believe in God or an afterlife?

NB for the purposes of this thread reincarnation or an "afterlife" which is just void or some sort of cosmological nothingness are not what I mean when I mention afterlife.
 

xisnotx

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I don't believe in god as he has been presented to me by religion. In that sense I'm an atheist.
I do believe certain goals, or outcomes, that have to have, as far as I'm aware, an explaination that is what I would call "equivalent to" what most religions, I think, teach, albeit, extremely innefeciently. In that sense I'm religious..as I don't doubt the truth of it...but it still takes faith to believe it..particularly from day to day.
But..I also believe that, fundamentally, perhaps subconsconsciously, every person (and perhaps thing..) has this faith...and utilizes it constantly..with or without their knowledge. I'm not sure there exists such a thing as a "faithless" individual...so perhaps that renders the whole "religious" question, for me at least, irrelevant. I know in my professional life, I treat it as such...perhaps to the detriment of more "god inspired" beliefs...
 

Beargryllz

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I consider myself to be a secular humanist

I consider it to be basically a religion, or an identity of some profound importance to my belief structure
 

You

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oxymorons gone awry. i tell you what - its 2011 and most of the forum members are American; what small hick town do you have to live in to play worshiper on sundays when you don't give a damn what jesus would do on anyday, much less monday when you're driving pass a homeless man who looks like him with a sign saying he only has "6 toes and needs cash"?
 

Matt_s

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I'm an atheist and I attend church at least twice a year. It averages out to around six times. I volunteer weekly with an organization loosely associated with the church I sporadically attend. I mumble my way through all the sacred oaths the same way I did when I was a believer. I'm aware of the hypocrisy involved. My ideal partner would be of this denomination but hopefully a non-believer (but this is an ideal and definitely not a deal-breaker).

I don't know if loose adherence to a church counts as being religious. I like the bad coffee and the people-watching and the music. I like looking around while everyone is praying. I like seeing old married couples all dressed up. Usually the sermons kind of piss me off, but looking at stained glass is fun.
 

FireShield98

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I'm not an atheist (I'm Christian, and as I am an N type, I go with my gut feeling for this), but I do have a question for atheists: what is your opinion on religions that have no gods, such as Buddhism, and which do you think are more illogical: monotheistic religions or polytheistic religions? Also, does anyone watch TheAmazingAtheist on Youtube? While I'm (once again) not an atheist and (economically) conservative (so I disagree with his extremely liberal views), I watch his videos because I like hearing the other side's opinion on any topic, I'm able to laugh at myself (and him when he's being so ignorant), and because he's funny in general.

As for answering the question of the thread, I'm the complete opposite. I believe in God, but I'm not very religious. I don't like going to church on Sundays (which we barely do anyway), but that's mainly because I've put off doing all of my homework until then and I don't want to waste time going anywhere. I do enjoy going there on holidays such as on Christmas Eve and Easter (mainly just Christmas Eve), because I like having traditions. But yeah, I believe in God, though I dislike organized religion (and as I said, I'm economically conservative, but socially liberal, or libertarian. I don't like it how social conservatives or authoritarians try to make laws based off of religion - what if we had a government with a majority of people being part of a religion other than Christianity? I bet you wouldn't like laws to be based on religion then!).
 

tinker683

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Hmmm.....

I believe, on faith, the inherit value of goodness, decency, integrity, empathy, and compassion. I hold and regard these ideals vary seriously and with the same degree of conviction that many believers hold to their own faith.

If that make makes me religious or even a god-believer, then so be it
 

gmanyo

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I think that if I were an atheist I would not be at all religious; I would probably be an existentialist/nihilist. Actually, probably a nihilist with existentialist tendencies. If we're going with religious atheism I might at best be a Theravada Buddhist since the essential goal, or at least end result, of Buddhism is to get out of suffering

I would guess that the larges category of religious atheism in the United States, though, is probably Secular Humanism. We probably have a few of those on board; Beargryllz obviously is and Matt_s and tinker683 seem to follow that line of belief as well.
 

Randomnity

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I know a few people who don't believe in god but attend religious ceremonies several times a year (catholic, jewish). I don't think that really counts as religious, though.
 

Lark

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Lark

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I know a few people who don't believe in god but attend religious ceremonies several times a year (catholic, jewish). I don't think that really counts as religious, though.

Yeah, that wasnt really what I was thinking of.
 

tinker683

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How do you define 'goodness'? Is it being nice to people or an abstract concept? Because the latter would render your belief circular.

Being nice to people, empathy, compassion. I'm not sure I'd have any use for goodness as an abstract concept.
 

KDude

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I'm not an atheist, but hate religion. Maybe I should call myself an "apostate". Seems like it shares the same fate at least. Religious people don't truly care about atheism, but who/what synchronizes with it in it's totality.
 

jixmixfix

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I'm not an atheist, but hate religion. Maybe I should call myself an "apostate". Seems like it shares the same fate at least. Religious people don't truly care about atheism, but who/what synchronizes with it in it's totality.

religion, the joke of mankind.
 

Synapse

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When you believe in a source outside of yourself you are an atheist hence all religions are atheist in nature because the belief of a source outside of themselves is not a belief of a source inside of themselves.

Touch wood.

What religion does is create separation from source, from genuine spirituality by creating a bridge that the Priest, Imam or Kohen nor a Rabbi can replace and hence. Once you remove institution there is freedom, power no longer means the authority for religions to control what you must know, perform magic in the way of rituals and ceremonies for you nor teach and educate you in the ways and laws that are printed on paper that is channeled from dubious sources to begin with. :wink:
 

KDude

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When you believe in a source outside of yourself you are an atheist hence all religions are atheist in nature because the belief of a source outside of themselves is not a belief of a source inside of themselves.

Touch wood.

What religion does is create separation from source, from genuine spirituality by creating a bridge that the Priest, Imam or Kohen nor a Rabbi can replace and hence. Once you remove institution there is freedom, power no longer means the authority for religions to control what you must know, perform magic in the way of rituals and ceremonies for you nor teach and educate you in the ways and laws that are printed on paper that is channeled from dubious sources to begin with. :wink:

The opposite of atheism isn't necessarily believing in a priest/rabbi/imam/etc. Or a large institution, for that matter. It's a deity (which, of course, is another source outside of one's self, but it's an entirely different ballpark too). It could very well be that believing in this deity is pantheistic, tied into nature and the universe as a whole. Which both includes yourself and all outside you. How do you respond to this kind of theism? They would say that cutting yourself off from that which is outside you is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Maybe even some atheists would believe in the same concept. I've heard plenty of atheistic scientists who find connection to all that is outside of us from the fact that we and everything is all assembled from star dust (or should I say star "stuff"?).

I'm just curious.. It seems like your definition of both theism and atheism centers around this idea of autonomy and the "self". When they can sometimes be more open than that.
 

Synapse

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The opposite of atheism isn't necessarily believing in a priest/rabbi/imam/etc. Or a large institution, for that matter. It's a deity (which, of course, is another source outside of one's self, but it's an entirely different ballpark too). It could very well be that believing in this deity is pantheistic, tied into nature and the universe as a whole. Which both includes yourself and all outside you. How do you respond to this kind of theism? They would say that cutting yourself off from that which is outside you is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Maybe even some atheists would believe in the same concept. I've heard plenty of atheistic scientists who find connection to all that is outside of us from the fact that we and everything is all assembled from star dust (or should I say star "stuff"?).

I'm just curious.. It seems like your definition of both theism and atheism centers around this idea of autonomy and the "self". When they can sometimes be more open than that.

Good point. And my interpretation is once the ability to learn source is inside than from any outside source, does one start to appreciate that the universe is a unified consciousness and everything outside of you is starts from inside of you and that we are all connected. And by doing this dulistic thinking changes from believing that there we are cutting ourselves from the outside when we are reestablishing the connection from inside to the outside. It is micromanagment in a macro and micro world you are speaking of. By defining that everything outside of ourselves is assembled from star dust, implies that we are made from star dust which is an illusion?

The Roman, Greek and Egyptian pantheons ascribe gods and goddesses, which are archetypes, symbols much like the seven deadly sins are archetypes, gods given life in a symbological way that are physical representations of personality ego. When people talk of the a light, a pearl, a sun during their death experiences and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel they are seeing inside of themselves, a partial hologram of where they began, instead of following the tunnel to reconnect with their higher consciousness and in turn understand that we are connected energetically inside, each and every one of us we are assuming the everything outside of ourselves, including star dust, deities are different in nature than what is inside. And while people come from near death experiences different and understand more of who they are in relation to their whole way of being, it is still at the start and the experience becomes a thing of the past as their life becomes once more attuned to the frequency and energy of the world around them.

Once you become aware of an inner relationship with the self and in turn source of all that is then one begins to understand that the world and the universe and nature around us are interlinked not from outside but from inside. To assume that all that is is outside is dimentional, 3D alone, without taking the opportunity to appreciate that we are mutlidimentional and in our multidimentional insides a stronger relationship with source becomes apparent which is ourselves because we come from source and source is part of who we are. Which means many things to different people.
 
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